oprah winfrey (4 posts)
A-List Secrets: Do Stars Get Paid for Grad Chats?
AP Photo/Ron Lewis
Why do universities think students want to hear celebrities make commencement speeches? And do the stars get paid?
—Denise, Boston
If you're asking how much Oprah got for that commencement chat she just gave at Stanford, the answer is $5,000—about enough, I would imagine, to pay for half a tassel in her cream-and-gold-brocade sky palace.
Harvard, which recently recruited J.K. Rowling to speak, says it didn't pay her anything—and not because, as you might suspect, she made Ron marry Hermione. (I personally would have paid Rowling 50 bucks just to see Draco tap that.) A spokesman tells me the university never pays its commencement speakers.
Other schools do, though. And just how much may surprise you, so keep reading...
Oprah Gives Stanford Grads Summer Reading
Everybody gets a degree! Everybody gets a degree!
Oprah Winfrey brought her inspirational den-mother rhetoric—and penchant for freebies—to Stanford University's Class of 2008 last night, addressing more than 4,000 students at the school's commencement ceremony.
Breaking News
Blaine Takes a Breather
AP Photo/Harpo Productions, Inc., George Burns
It's no illusion. David Blaine has done it again.
The famed trickster broke the breath-holding world record during a live stunt today on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Divers retrieved a bluish-tinged Blaine, 35, from a water-filled sphere after 17 minutes and 4 seconds, surpassing the previous mark of 16 minutes, 14 seconds set on April 3 by German free diver Tom Sietas, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Blaine, who trained with various free divers beforehand, inhaled pure oxygen through a mask before submerging himself, which, under Guinness rules, is allowed for up to 30 minutes to help clean out carbon dioxide from one's system.
The water chamber was the same the performance artist used when he performed his "Drowned Alive" stunt at New York's Lincoln Center in May 2006. For that feat, he immersed himself for one week (with breathing tubes) and then capped it off by trying unsuccessfully to snap the breath-holding record before he was pulled out on doctor's orders.
Exclusive
Oprah Spills Secrets of Tom Cruise Interview
Harpo
Oprah Winfrey went there with Tom Cruise.
I can exclusively report that Ms. Winfrey’s upcoming interview with Cruise includes questions about Scientology, his verbal smackdown with Matt Lauer on the Today show and, yes, the infamous couch-jumping incident.
Winfrey actually revealed these details herself during this weekend's Las Vegas taping of her joint interview with Tina Turner and Cher.
And that isn't all Winfrey shared.
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